Rather than repeat TheNewStack summary; I want to highlight the operational and integration gaps that we continue to ignore.

It’s exciting to watch a cluster magically appear during a keynote demo, but those demos necessarily skip pass the very real provisioning, networking and security work needed to build sustained clusters.

This post of my interview for the OpenStack Super User site originally appeared there on 3/23 under the title “OpenStack at 10: different code, same collaboration?”

With over 15 years of cloud experience, Rob Hirschfeld also goes way back with OpenStack. His involvement dates to before it was officially founded and he was also one of the initial Board Members. In addition to his role as Individual Director, Hirschfeld currently chairs the DefCore committee. He’ll be speaking about DefCore at the upcoming Vancouver Summit with Alan Clark, Egle Sigler and Sean Roberts.

He talks to Superuser about the importance of patches, priorities for 2015 and why you should care about OpenStack vendors making money.

Superuser: You’ve been with the project since before it started, where do you hope it will be in five years?

In five years, I expect that nearly every line of code will have been replaced. The thing that will endure is the community governance and interaction models that we’re working out to ensure commercial collaboration.

[3/24 Added Clarification Note: I find humbled watching traditionally open-unfriendly corporations using OpenStack to learn how to become open source collaborations. Our governance choices will have long lasting ramifications in the industry.]

What is something that a lot of people don’t know about OpenStack?

It was essentially a “rewrite fork” of Eucalyptus created because they would not accept patches. That’s a cautionary tale about why accepting patches is essential that should not get lost from the history books.

Any thoughts on your first steps to the priorities you laid out in your candidacy profile?

I’ve already started to get DefCore into an execution phase with additional Board and Foundation leadership joining into the effort. We’ve set a very active schedule of meetings with two sub-committees running in parallel…It’s going to be a busy spring.

You say that the company you founded, RackN, is not creating an OpenStack product. How are you connected to the community?

RackN supports OpenCrowbar which provides a physical ready state infrastructure for scale platforms like OpenStack. We are very engaged in the community from below by helping make other distributions, vendors and operators successful.

What are the next steps to creating the “commercially successful ecosystem” you mentioned in your candidacy profile? What are the biggest obstacles to this?

We have to make stability and scale a critical feature. This will mean slowing features and new projects; however, I hear a lot of frustration that OpenStack is not focused on delivering a solid base.

Without a base, the vendors cannot build profitable products. Without profits, they cannot keep funding the project. This may be radical for an open project, but I think everyone needs to care more if vendors are making money.

What are some more persistent myths about the cloud?

That the word cloud really means anything. Everyone has their own definition. Mine is “infrastructure with an API” but I’d happily tell you it’s also about process and ops.

Who are your real-life heroes?

FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) founders Dean Kamen and Woodie Flowers. They executed a real vision about how to train for both competition and collaboration in the next generation of engineers. Their efforts in building the next generation of leaders really impact how we will should open source collaboration. That’s real innovation.

What do you hope to get out of the next summit?

First, I want to see vendors passing DefCore requirements. After that, I’d like to see the operators get more equal treatment and I’m hoping to spend more time working with them so they can create places to share knowledge.

What’s your favorite/most important OpenStack debate?

There are two. First, I think the API vs. implementation is a critical growth curve for OpenStack. We need to mature past being so implementation driven so we can have stand alone APIs.

Second, I think the “benevolent dictator” discussion is useful. Since we are never going to have one, we need a real discussion about how to define and defend project wide priorities in a meaningful way. Resolving both items is essential to our long-term viability.

A little while back, Art Fewell and I had two excellent discussions about general trends and challenges in the cloud and scale data center space. Due to technical difficulties, the first (funnier one) was lost forever to NSA archives, but the second survived!

The video and transcript were just posted to Network World as part of Art’s on going interview series. It was an action packed hour so I don’t want to re-post the transcript here. I thought selected quotes (under the video) were worth calling out to whet your appetite for the whole tamale.

My highlights:

.. partnering with a start-up was really hard, but partnering with an open source project actually gave us a lot more influence and control.

Then we got into OpenStack, … we [Dell] wanted to invest our time and that we could be part of and would be sustained and transparent to the community.

Incumbents are starting to be threatened by these new opened technologies … that I think levels of playing field is having an open platform.

…I was pointing at you and laughing… [you’ll have to see the video]

docker and containerization … potentially is disruptive to OpenStack and how OpenStack is operating

You have to turn the crank faster and faster and faster to keep up.

Small things I love about OpenStack … vendors are learning how to work in these open communities. When they don’t do it right they’re told very strongly that they don’t.

It was literally a Power Point of everything that was wrong … [I said,] “Yes, that’s true. You want to help?”

…people aiming missiles at your house right now…

With containers you can sell that same piece of hardware 10 times or more and really pack in the workloads and so you get better performance and over subscription and so the utilization of the infrastructure goes way up.

I’m not as much of a believer in that OpenStack eats the data center phenomena.

First thing is automate. I’ve talked to people a lot about getting ready for OpenStack and what they should do. The bottom line is before you even invest in these technologies, automating your workloads and deployments is a huge component for being successful with that.

The thing that I’m really excited about is the service architecture. We’re in the middle of doing on the RackN and Crowbar side, we’re in the middle of doing an architecture that’s basically turning data center operations into services.

What platform as a service really is about, it’s about how you store the information. What services do you offer around the elastic part? Elastic is time based, it’s where you’re manipulating in the data.

RE RackN: You can’t manufacture infrastructure but you can use it in a much “cloudier way”. It really redefines what you can do in a datacenter.

That abstraction layer means that people can work together and actually share scripts

I definitely think that OpenStack’s legacy will more likely be the community and the governance and what we’ve learned from that than probably the code.

This quick advice for preparing for a college interview is also useful for any interview: identify three key strengths and activities then prepare short insightful stories that show your strengths in each activity. Stories are the strongest way to convey information.

I’ve been doing engineering college interviews since 2013 for my Alma mater, Duke University. I love meeting the upcoming generation of engineers and seeing how their educational experiences will shape their future careers. Sadly, I also find that few students are really prepared to showcase themselves well in these interviews. Since it makes my job simpler if you are prepared, I’m going to post my recommendation for future interviews!

It does not take much to prepare for a college interview: you mainly need to be able to tell some short, detailed stories from your experiences that highlight your strengths.

In my experience, the best interviewees are good at telling short and specific stories that highlight their experiences and strengths. It’s not that they have better experiences, they are just better prepared at showcasing them. Being prepared makes you more confident and comfortable which then helps you control of how the interview goes and ensures that you leave the right impression.

1/9/15 Note: Control the interview? Yes! You should be planning to lead the interviewer to your strengths. Don’t passively expect them to dig that information out of you. It’s a two-way conversation, not an interrogation.

Here’s how it works:

Identify three activities that you are passionate about. They do not have to represent the majority of you effort. Select ones that define who you are, or caused you to grow in some way. They could be general items like “reading” or very specific like “summer camp 2016.” You need to get excited when you talk about these items. Put these on the rows/y-axis of a 3×3 grid (see below).

Identify three attributes that describe you (you may want help from friends or parents here). These words should be enough to give a fast snapshot of who you are. In the example below, the person would be something like “an adventure seeking leader who values standing out as an individual.” Put these attributes on the columns/x-axis of your grid as I’ve shown below.

Come up with the nine short stories (3-6 sentences!) for the intersections on the grid where you demonstrated the key attribute during the activity. They cannot just be statements – you must have stories because they provide easy to remember examples for your interview. If you don’t have a story for an intersection, then talk about how you plan to work this in the future.

Note: This might feel repetitive when you construct your grid but this technique works exceptionally well during an hour-long interview. You should repeat yourself because you need reinforce your strengths and leave the interviewer with a sure sense of who you are.

Sample Grid – Click to Enlarge

Remember: An admissions, alumni or faculty interview is all about making a strong impression about who you are and, more importantly, what you will bring to the university.

Having a concrete set of experiences and attributes makes sure that you reinforce your strengths. By showing them in stories, you will create a much richer picture about who you are than if you simply assert statements about yourself. Remember the old adage of “show, don’t tell.”

Don’t use this grid as the only basis for your interview! It should be a foundation that you can come back to during your conversations with college representatives. These are your key discussion points – let them help you round out the dialog.

Good luck!

PS: Google your interviewer! I expect the candidates to know me before they meet me. It is perfectly normal and you’d be crazy to not take advantage of that.

This is not puff interview – We spent an hour together and Rafael did not shy away from asking hard questions like “Why did Dell jump into OpenStack?” and “is VMware a threat to OpenStack?” Rather than posting the whole transcript (it’s posted here), I’m including the questions (as a teaser) below. There is some real meat in these answers about OpenStack, Dell, Crowbar and challenges facing the project.

WARNING: My job is engineering, not marketing. You may find my answers (which are MY OWN ANSWERS) to be more direct that you are expecting. If you find yourself needing additional circumlocution then simply close your browser and move on.

Some highlights…

Dell’s interest in OpenStack has been very pragmatic. OpenStack is something we really see a market need for.

Rackspace … runs on OpenStack pretty much off trunk … That’s exactly the type of vibrant community we want to see. At the same time, there is a growing community that wants to use OpenStack distributions with support, certifications and they are fine with being 6 months behind OpenStack off trunk. That’s good, and we want that shadow, we want that combination of pure minded early adopters and less sophisticated OpenStack users both working together.

We are working with different partners to bring OpenStack to different customers in different ways. It is confusing. Your question about Dell Crowbar was right … it is targeted at a certain class of users, and I don’t want enterprise customers who expect a lot of shiny chrome and zero touch. That’s not the target by now for Dell Crowbar. We definitely need that sort of magic decoder page to help customers understand our commercial offering.

What does a customer specifically need to do when moving from OpenStack Essex to Folsom for example?

My next question is around proof of concept versus production, Rob. How are customers using OpenStack and can you give examples for both scenarios?

I hear very often two different statements: “Open Stack is an alternative to Amazon.” The other is: “OpenStack is an alternative to VMware … maybe, hopefully in two or three years from now.” Which of both statements is true?

How do you view VMware joining OpenStack. Is it a threat to OpenStack or does VMware add value to the project?

Let us speak about market adoption. Who are the early adopters of OpenStack? And when do you expect OpenStack to hit the tipping point for mass market adoption?

Rob, for all those interested in Dell’s commercial offering around OpenStack … can you give a brief overview?

Dell TechCenter that provides customers an overview over our OpenStack offering: Dell Crowbar as our DevOps tool in its various shapes and forms, OpenStack distros we support … cloud services we build around OpenStack … hardware capabilities optimized for OpenStack.